History
Perry has full ownership of his movies, and Lions Gate Entertainment serves as his distributor for all of his films. His first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, produced on a budget of $5.5 million, became an unexpected commercial success prompting widespread discussion among industry watchers about whether middle-class African-Americans were simply not being addressed by mainstream Hollywood movies. Its final gross box office receipts were $50.6 million, although it was critically panned scoring only 16 percent approval rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes. On its opening weekend, February 24, 2006, Perry's film version of Madea's Family Reunion opened at #1 with $30.3 million. The film eventually grossed $65 million and, like Diary, almost all of it in the United States. The film was jump-started by an hour-long appearance by Perry and his co-stars on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
His next project for Lions Gate, Daddy's Little Girls, starring Gabrielle Union and Idris Elba was released in the U.S. on February 14, 2007. It grossed over $31 million. Perry wrote, directed, produced and starred in his next movie, Why Did I Get Married?, which was released on October 12, 2007. It opened as the top-grossing movie in its first weekend, earning $21.4 million at the box office. It is loosely based on the play which Perry wrote in 2004. Filming began March 5, 2007, in Whistler, British Columbia, Vancouver, then Atlanta, where Perry opened his own studio. Janet Jackson, Sharon Leal, Jill Scott and Tasha Smith appear in the film. Perry's 2008 film, Meet the Browns, which was released on March 21, opened at #2 with a $20,082,809 weekend gross. The Family That Preys opened on September 12, 2008, and grossed over $35.1 million as of October. Madea Goes to Jail opened #1 on February 20, 2009, grossing $41 million and becoming his largest opening to date. This was Perry's seventh film with Lions Gate Entertainment.
On May 1, 2012 a four-alarm fire engulfed portions of the studio complex, causing the partial collapse of one building. Less than three months later, another fire broke out on the roof of another building on the morning of August 27, 2012.
Read more about this topic: Tyler Perry Studios
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
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“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
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